SOCIALISM AND ITS DOGMAS

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXII, Issue 15557, 6 March 1911, Page 10

SOCIALISM AND ITS DOGMAS

TO THE EDITOB.

Sir, —After reading Mr Sullivan's reply to my last letter I can quite understand why the revolutionary Socialists regard him as being as slow as wet week, to use his own verbiage. Now, as to the bogey of accumulated fortunes that, according to Mr Sullivan's view are to remain to plague the toilers after the power of the land magnates is broken, I would cite the authority of John Stuart Mill’s " Principles of Political Economy,” and Le Tourneau’s •‘Property.'’ Both these economists affirm that ali forms of property, exclusive of land, are perishable, and that ail the wealth and capital extant is of recent not of past production. 1 have already pointed out to our impetuous young hotspur that the basis of all these fortunes is not represented by the gold, coin or bullion looked up in bank vaults, that the land values are iho security for them. As to his object lesson of the large producer crushing out his smaller comnetitars by the uso of co-operation and labour-saving devices. ft does not appear to have occurred to Mr Sullivan that the small j producers could frustrate that move by | adopting the same tactics on the jo.nt j stock concerned principle. Where he gathered the impression that single taxors are opposed to voluntary co-operation, I am unable to discover. 1 cannot understand how any person of Mr Sullivan's intelligence should jump to the conclusion that when our ideal in taxation is attained we proposed to abandon the uso of labour-saving machinery and cooperative effort in production. The adoption of the single tax will stimulate inventive genius and promote the rapid development of voluntary co-operation.

Mow, e.s to Mr Sullivan’s constructive proposals, just hero be becomes a total wreck. First as to the minimum wage law. In an article that ho contributed to your paper some time ago, lie put his linger on the fatal defect in the scheme when he admitted that tho capitalists could defeat the measure by transferring their investment from circulating and fixed capital to investments in land values and other monopolies. It could be further evaded by the employers becoming importers instead of manufacturers, but even if these obstacles were removed I cannot understand bow any worker with any conception of his natural rights can consent to allow the wages for his services to be fixed by a Supreme Court Judge or a Parliament witli capitalistic bias. Such an idea is repugnant to any decent man, for the difficulty of appraising the true value of labour by legal tribunals is so great that labour always get the shell while the employers sco::p out the oyster. As to State ownership of industries tho experience of all the workers employed in suck ventures condemns it. In Austria and Germany tobacco is’ a State industry but the workers Receive starvati-c; wages. In Russia the State controltho liquor traffic and the workers arc sweated. Even in Australia the rail way men are gaoled for striking, am in Sydney postal clerks are paid 2‘. per week and find themselves. A. oasis of State-owned industries coni, not flourish in a desert of capitalism Tv Mr Sullivan will pay a visit to on.' State coal mines and co-operative work: lie will scon learn that a man can It oppressed under State Socialism ndiv.i ; isfired by a capitalistic Government, yved he would pause before comniittin; tiie workers to the authority of officii bureaucrats whom i would not trust to see a mule properly shod. - 1 am. etc-.. HULLING STONE.